


Traintracks

by writing_loser



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Purple Prose, Rare Pairings, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-12-01 00:06:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11474478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writing_loser/pseuds/writing_loser





	Traintracks

 

Hitoka:

Softhearted - Having softness or tenderness of heart that can lead them into trouble; susceptible of pity or other kindly affection.

 

 

Chikara:

Indecisive- characterized by lack of decision and firmness, especially under pressure.

 

 

* * *

 

 

     A lot goes on in the human mind, hardly anyone seems to know how to figure it out. The only way to really describe it is when you might think you know how everyone works, how people work, how emotions work, how speech works, and how to understand situations, but you can't get it out of your mind. You just know it, it's stuck in your brain somewhere far away. There's probably a person somewhere out there that knows more than the average person; perhaps, maybe not. Maybe everyone has this. Maybe they know about things they can't explain and they're probably attentive to the point of fear.

Maybe. 

 

 

     And there's probably someone else out there that feels that too. Maybe the two are worlds apart, maybe countries, maybe neighborhoods but they will never know how to show each other they see the same things and know the same things because it's different in everyone's mind.

 

 

Ever heard of that theory that we all see different colors? That when you identify something as green and someone else sees green too, through their eyes it's actually your red?

 

 

Yeah.

 

 

\--------------------------------------------

 

 

This is how it worked.

 

 

Chikara kept himself away from decisions, small or big, situations that caused stress, big or small. And just, most things related. They weren't good for him, he couldn't really figure out how to help himself. He ignored the fact that he liked girls but also boys, he pushed away the fact that he wanted 'that', whatever 'that' was in the situation because he also wanted something else and could not deal with choosing. He didn't know how to tell the barista at the place he gets coffee that he doesn't like extra sugar for God's sake. He broke himself down and he never stopped it, couldn't stop, he started to ask himself why he couldn't stop late at night when he wasn't sleeping. Why can't he make the decision to help himself?

 

 

What's the point when after all this time of trying so hard and becoming less and less healthy because of stress levels going through the roof people are almost constantly reprimanding him for not being able to make simple decisions? He's surprised he's still living. He doesn't think what's happening counts as living. Nobody else is this way so there's obviously something wrong with him.

 

 

So he helped everyone around him but never himself.

 

 

\--------------------------------------------

 

 

Let me start again.

 

 

This is how it worked.

 

 

Hitoka kept herself away from most interaction with people and held back the thoughts of how much she wanted to help and most importantly held herself back from being herself, this girl who didn't want people to be alone. She couldn't help but help but it always led to people taking advantage of her and it killed her inside. She cried and she started to hurt and she stopped trusting everyone. She stopped helping everyone. How could people even be so cruel? She thought it was good, she was doing herself good and taking herself out of the target point of everyone else but stopped helping herself and that, that was the real breaking point. And the last thing she really needed was a broken breaking point.

 

 

She remembers them breaking down in her room at four am when the sun barely came through the windows and both their eyes were aching for sleep. There was the heavy empty feeling in her stomach from not eating for multiple hours. She remembers that night and it will never go away, she did not help them, she did not move. Her face went blank, and they cried into their hands instead of her shoulder and they refrained from showing any personal feelings about everything from that point on.

 

 

She never stays up until four anymore.

 

 

She stopped helping everyone, including herself.

 

 

-

 

 

(Chikara was sure that sitting in his seat in class and only hearing white noise when he didn't want to think was something to be worried about. But he wasn't making the decision to say anything.)

 

 

Hitoka put herself out of the eyes of people looking for any kind of help. Like I said, she took herself out of the target point and she saw all these people around her asking for help and thriving off of other people holding them up and still turned her eyes to the papers on her desk. She always did. At this point she stopped tuning herself into the voices and movement of other people because it was killing her heart and making it do that weird ache it seemed to often do. The day she tuned out of everyone was the same day she somehow tuned into someone invisible, and she wasn't quite sure she liked it.

 

 

(Chikara was sure the girl who always seemed to stare at him when they passed by in the halls and always made eye contact was seeing something in his face that he wasn't aware of himself. But he couldn't make the decision to worry about it.)

 

 

She saw every person and saw the varying level of help-me in their eyes, it really only depended on the person. The person in her room at four am had eyes so dark and scared that they were screaming for help and all it did was give her blind eyes and deaf ears. She caught the eyes of the boy in the hall and almost stopped dead in the middle of traffic because the only thing she saw in his eyes was an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and it sounded like the same sound trains make going over tracks.

 

 

And he was nicknamed Traintracks. How was she supposed to find his actual name?

 

 

The only difference between his eyes and the eyes of the girl in her room at four am was she was asking for help and he was not.

 

 

(He started to become weary of these hallway stare downs because he looked at himself in the mirror last night and didn't see anything new.)

 

 

Hitoka approached him a few days later in the library when she saw him testing how far back he could lean before falling and reading a book at the same time.

 

 

(She's walking over. She's walking over that's not- oh god please don't fall-)

 

 

She caught the back of his chair and he looked up at her from halfway to the ground. And the craziest thing happened then because he went from four am to seven pm when she sits with her knees pulled up to her chest trying to recreate the sunset with a brush and some old cheap paint and that almost caused her to let go of the chair altogether.

 

 

Instead, she mumbled. 

 

 

 

"Traintracks," she had whispered and he blinked one, twice, three times before knitting his eyebrows together in the most expressionable face she had seen in her life.

 

 

"I'm sorry?" he asked her. He leaned forward so she wasn't holding him up anymore. His voice did not, in fact, sound like traintracks. It did sound like monotone honey, though.

 

 

She realized at that point that she hadn't answered and he was still looking at her and she was still wondering what his name was. She shifted the bag she had over her shoulder and swiftly walked away, and he looked down at the forgotten book on the table, his eyebrows still pulled together.

 

 

 

 

 

It was a friday night. Hitoka always pictured friday nights with dark skies and lights hung around the balcony of her apartment, and when she thought about it long enough she could feel the cold air and could smell the smell of the air only available between ten pm and three am. But three am isn't easy to get to, so she lays down on the balcony to watch the stars at eleven.

 

 

But right now? Right now was not eleven yet and she was walking outside in the rain, trying to make it to the library before they closed. Her coat wasn't enough to block out all of the rain even when held over her head and started to drip through the fabric right onto her clumsily tied-back hair. She had half a mind to think about that when she stepped through the library doors but soon forgot about it when she saw him sitting at the same table again, this time not leaning back and this time not seeing her. Hitoka stopped again and looked and looked and looked because traintracks was still such a fitting name for this boy she'd never talked to. She'd seen four am again through his eyes and she'd seen seven pm through the frown on his face, but now she was feeling the cold smell only found between ten pm and three am in the way he way sitting with his chin on his arm and the other arm stretched out to hold the book he was reading while he slumped over the table. He wasn't asking for help in his eyes or through his mouth and she, for the first time in awhile, wanted to see something else from him than complete and unfailing pretend.

 

 

And she wanted to help, which spoke more than anything she'd painted or drawn or created. He looked up.

 

 

Hitoka continued walking past his table, past any table for that matter and back to the section covering famous artists and poets. At this point he's going to think she's some insane stalker who stares at him in the hallways and at library tables and forget it if she didn't even care. She actually wished he'd go away, he's messing up her no-help no-four-am rules and it was maddening. But she didn't, really. She wants really only to stay up until four am that night as a test to see if he matches up, but she knows how that'd turn out. Where there's four am there's- where's, where's Cocteau? This is exactly where anything on him should be, there's just- why is there nothing. She stopped and pushed her loose hair out of her face, sighing and subconsciously biting the inside of her lip. She needed to read up on the painter for one of her classes (teacher's a hardass) and a paper on him was due tomorrow (she's a procrastinator) and there is nothing here.

 

 

        "I figured you'd need some book on art considering there's paint on your face and you look like you haven't slept in days but hey, it's not my thing to judge if you're not really. If you're just looking for any old book

that's cool too." Monotone honey. "Might I suggest some light and casual Poe this evening?"

 

 

Hitoka spun around and saw the dumb head tilt he was doing through the shelf behind her and that damn expression full of genuine emotion and damnit she not only saw all the things she was scared of but she wanted to paint him.

 

 

     "Cocteau. Seen anything around here?" She managed to not mumble this time, which she guessed was better. Traintracks snapped his fingers and his half lidded eyes widened just a bit.

 

 

        "Got it, follow me." He turned and she lost sight of him behind the books crowding the shelves. Sighing again, she sped up her pace and tried to keep up with the footsteps on the other side until she caught view of him already sitting back at the table with his book, this time closed.

 

 

     "I grabbed the books on him when I first got here, I have an essay on him for my film class due at two o'clock sharp tomorrow and my teacher's-"

 

 

     "A complete and total asshole? Yeah, I have that same essay due tomorrow for art," Hitoka cautiously took the seat across from him and watched as he pulled out the chair next to him and grabbed a stack of books off of it. They landed on the table with a thump and she looked at him from around the pile.

 

 

     "If you don't mind me asking, why grab every book on him? There's at least fifteen books here, and I know that professor is bad but I didn't think he was that bad."

 

 

    "Couldn't choose one," he shifted away shyly. "I thought, might as well get them all and learn a little something from each. I haven't introduced myself, have I? Ennoshita Chikara." She shook his hand from around the pile, too.

 

 

"Yachi Hitoka."

 


End file.
